Corpus-Paul

["Frank W. Hughes" <fwhughes AT sunbeach.net>]

Michael Thompson wrote:

We don't know if they had the texts in front of them when they wrote or whether they quoted from memory, or simply alluded to oral traditions. Certainly they use the texts with freedom.

Check out the quotation from Didache from "the Gospel" which includes a form of what we know as the Sermon on the Mount, yet with interpolations from the Lukan Sermon on the Plain.  It really looks to me like a completely different text of the Sermon.  And what gospel was Didache referring to?  Apparently the only one that author knew.  Maybe Q.  Maybe an early form of the Sermon on the Mount before "Matthew" got his hands on it.  Check out the quotation from "the gospel according to Mark" in Clement of Alexandria's Quis dives salvetur, which says it's from Mark but then quotes it with interpolations from the other gospels.  Clement is the teacher in the catechetical school in the intellectual capital of Christianity at the end of the second century.  He should have had a good text of Mark.  But he didn't, or he is quite sloppy in his quotation of it.  But that's another matter.

The analogy with the texts of the gospels is a fair one though, in which case don't we have some mss that go a little further back into the _early_ 2nd c to give us a feel for flexibility and firmness of texts?

I don't recall any MS. of the Pauline letters (and nothing very substantial for any of the NT) that should be dated before 200 C.E.  See the Nestle-Aland 27th edition, pp. 684-688.  To go back into even the middle of the second century you have to deal with patristic quotations which are generally a can of worms to deal with.  My experience has shown me anything but a firm NT text in second century Christian authors.  Can any NT textual critics help us out here?

All best,
Frank W. Hughes
Codrington College
Barbados